Anyone Else Finds Sitting The Most Uncomfortable Posture?

[xRobin]

This morning my heart rate laying down in bed was 67 - up to 92 on sitting up - and 118 standing. That's on a day where I feel pretty "normal", although I think I've just got used to having a racing heart all the time so unless it's 140+ I don't really notice it.

I feel that when I tell people restaurants are difficult for me, they don't really get it. I think my family and boyfriend still kinda think it's just anxiety because they don't understand how sitting can make you feel so bad.

That's just like me! I was doing the dishes one night, before diagnosis, standing. After a few minutes my chest felt weird like I couldn't take a deep breath, and this pressure started to bloom. On a hunch I took my pulse and it was 136. I put a heart rate monitor on and was really surprised at how much it jumped around! Just bending over to take stuff out of the fruit drawer in the fridge made it drop dramatically, then pop back up on standing. I hadn't noticed it unless it got really high.

The other night I spent some time with my husband explaining POTS. He's generally understanding but didn't quite grasp why prolonged sitting is tiring. It's just sitting, right?

I sat on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor, and asked him to sit next to me. I got out my iPad and drew pictures: where blood goes when you stand up vs. lying down, the difference between blood flow in POTS people and healthy people, the stress chemicals that our bodies put out to get the blood to circulate and why they also cause agitation and anxiety, and why it's so vital that blood get returned to the heart and brain. By the time I was done drawing I asked him to look at my feet which had gradually become purple, and explained that was blood pooling. I asked him to imagine how it might feel if his cells weren't constantly getting fresh oxygen.

He gets it better now. It's a really weird disease to understand and explain!